From an email to a guy who’s got a project to integrate the world of physical “codex” books with electronic resources.
I have been thinking about the challenge of integrating physical and digital worlds via tools like the sBook and I have a suggestion. I think you need to be designing at a higher level of abstraction: really, designing a standard instead of a device.
Think about it this way.
Class of bibliographic entities:
- printed book (i think “codex” is too jargony)
- journal article
- report
- e-book
Class of physical Enablers
- CueCat
- Kindle
- Sony E-Reader
- the sBook enabler
Class of citation services, e.g.
- Legal standards (West, F.2d 1033)
- Scientific standards: Nature 355:321 12 October
- Digital Object Identifiers
Class of web resources
- Single purpose websites (1 per book)
- Google Book repository
- Amazon catalog
- LibraryThing
Class of web services
- Annotation
- Discussion
- Recommending
Right now, we have a variety of entities pursuing efforts to connect all these classes with single threads or paths, e.g. Amazon connects e-book documents with Kindle with the Amazon catalog with recommending. Kindle is a closed system so that thread is the only you one can follow if you own the Kindle class of Enabler.
Tthe proposed sBook would connect codex books using a custom-built Enabler with some undetermined citation format with purpose built websites and offer Discussion and Recommending services.
What is really needed, IMHO is an open architecture that allows mix and match of all these classes. I believe Kindle is eventually going to be a limited success (not a failure, just a 10% of the market type thing) because it locks the reader into a single thread of classes. I’m more optimistic about Google Book Search because I think their physical enabler will be any device that can read a PDF and I think they will eventually ave a good citation standard and robust discussion services at GBS.
Clear as mud?
Hastily,
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